Put another way, the onus is on the rest of us to show transgender people that it’s safe to be visible.

This, a thousand times over. We should not be asking or expecting people to put themselves at risk. Those of us who are for acceptance need to step up to the front lines on social justice issues, rather than wait for marginalized people to step up and paint a target on their heads as well as being pinned to a spotlight.

Well, in order to be visible, and to thank PZ for posting about it, the worst-kept secret ever: I’m a trans woman. I transitioned 24 years ago, in what was a very different world for trans people. I had to rely on my military unarmed combat training more than once; once, while being sexually assaulted, I fought for my life, knowing that trans women who get found out during a rape usually end up dead. I survived. I didn’t go to the police, because I didn’t trust them not to say I deserved it for being a deceitful bitch, didn’t trust them not to see our relative injuries and guess who started it…had good reason not to trust almost anyone. One of the doctors whose signature I needed molested me – I had no choice but to think of England, as it were. He had my life in his hands and knew it.

For 12 years, I lived with mismatching ID, terrified of every time I had to use a public toilet, or was pulled over while driving, or had to write a cheque – would this be the time I got the bad cop? The one who’d put me in the boy jail and let the judge sort it out? Perhaps the best day I had since transition was finally being able to change my gender marker under the strict conditions the cis world imposed on us.

I always said that my transition goal was to wake up, want milk in my tea, to go to the store and buy it, with no more reaction to my presence than “hey, that chick’s not wearing a bra!” – no children pointing and saying “what’s that, mummy?” and having mummy answer “I don’t know what it is!” No laughter, mockery, violence, refusal of service…just living.

I’m glad to say, goal long since reached. The world is somewhat better for us than it was. But trans women of colour continue to face a murder rate higher than any other demographic you’d like to name. We need visibility, but we need (as noted above) to know it’s safe to be visible.

My cis, white, hetero, male privilege is an armour that was strapped on me at my birth. Often, there’s nothing I can do about it but be aware of it. But I also try and use my experiences to give me *some* insight into what marginalised go through. Unfortunately, in this case I don’t have to stretch much.

To say I was hunted as a child would not be much of an exaggeration. The kid who lived across the street used to egg our house, let the air out of our car’s tyres, and bully me at every opportunity. He used to watch our house, and if he saw me leave he would chase me down and torment me. I can’t breath through one side of my nose because of his fist. He’s part of the reason that to this day, just shy of my fiftieth birthday, I still sometimes have to get up in the night and lock all the windows.

Please understand, I’m not saying this for sympathy’s sake, but to make clear that I have some inkling of what it means to be in danger for no reason other than being who you are. I can imagine what it must be like to feel not that one person is hunting you, but that a whole society is. I can imagine what it must feel like to not know just who the hunter is in that crowd of people.

Trans visibility seems like a noble goal, but it also seems like we’re a long way away from it. Perhaps we shouldn’t take that ‘visibility’ in a literal way. Perhaps we should take it to mean that those of us privileged enough to not have to worry about society’s reaction to us need to speak up, to remind folks that trans people exist and that they are first and foremost people. People deserving of all the rights and privileges that our society can offer.

Humanity is so diverse that the concept of someone being ‘other’, being not human, just because they are different from you is ridiculous.